All posts by DeadliftTeacher

In some respects, it’s a superpower. Too often, this power is squandered into things that hurt us. The point is to feel something. That’s why we love drama especially when we’re not the center of it.

I haven’t been on YouTube much because I’ve been working on other projects. But, randomly, on Labor Day, I was scrolling through my subscription feed and saw a video that caught my attention.

It was POG – Physiques of Greatness – with Chris Jones talking about some issues with Vince.

I don’t know much about the story so feel free to fill me in; but, I watched the whole video.

What made me watch the whole video? Because Chris Jones made me feel something; he was angry and frustrated.

It had less to do with what he said and more about how he said it. If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, it’s so much easier to relate.

I did business with a best friend of mine and we ran into all sorts of problems. In case you’ve listened to our podcasts, it wasn’t Nash. It was another friend. I’ll save that story for another time.

One phrase that I vividly remember from POG’s video is what he said at 6:09.

It’s such a great video. You’re going to let trolls stop you from getting your money.

Look, it doesn’t have to be money. Money could be anything. Insert whatever it is that’s currently driving you forward.

The emotion of anger, love, hate, passion – are what makes us human. You can’t solely rely on logic. We all get emotional. People want connection. You can’t connect without putting yourself out there.

Fear is the reason why so many people are lazy. Why so many people don’t do shit with their lives. They’re afraid of failing, afraid of looking stupid and afraid of succeeding.

Being afraid of success is real; because, if you’re successful, what’s next? What the f*ck is next? There’s a bigger weight to lift; a harder job that’s ahead of you. After that big squat, what’s next? A bigger squat.

F*ck! I miss powerlifting.

So, I guess it’s best to be a bitch. Crawl up in a little ball and hide from everything that exposes you to physical and emotional pain.

Of course not!

Pain, hard work, ridiculous efforts of seemingly impossible tasks force us to grow and become stronger, to become better, to be more resilient, to weather the storms of life.

It’s within frustrations that I’ve become an unstoppable force.

Nothing is going to stop me. I’m going to make it. I don’t f*cking care who doesn’t believe me. I don’t care if you think it’s impossible. F*ck you.

It reminds me of the Nine Inch Nails song, Piggy:

“Nothing can stop me now, because I don’t care anymore.”

Ironically, in this specific context, it means that I care so much. I care so much to succeed. I care so much to craft the life I want and no one can stop me.

That’s what I felt while watching that 15 minute POG video.

He said: “Nothing is going to stop me from living my dream.”

It takes that kind of wit, fortitude, courage to go against all odds.

Get under that seemingly impossible weight to squat and get the f*ck right up.

You can’t reap the rewards of life without the risks. I’m not even talking about money or lifting more weight. I’m talking about having a full life.

Approaching that relationship more seriously, getting married, having kids, taking a promotion, starting a business, starting a YouTube channel, starting a podcast, creating a product…

The chance that it will fail…

That it will blow up in your face…

That you will look stupid…

You ignore the naysayers; you speed past them until you drop them.

The people that drag you down…

The people that act as heavy weights, like a sled that attached to you…

You ignore your own negative thoughts; you shut them out…

You look fear right in the face and you do it anyway.

The fear is real and one of my favorite authors, Seth Godin says:

“Fear is always there, it’s not going away we must learn to dance with it.”

And, it’s this dance of approaching the heavy weight of life to put more on the bar, figuratively or literally; that when the bar crushes, we know that we’re going to get a chance to try again. Maybe not in the same way, but in another way that makes life worth living.

In case you’d like to listen to me read this to you, you can see watch or listen to the video version of this article, or scroll to the bottom for the embedded video. The audio version will be available on my soundcloud soon.

Back when I was as green as I could be, I was at 24 hour Fitness University. My instructors were chiropractors by the names of Dr. Kirk Meyer, Chuck Fields and Nagoya. These instructors had such a huge impact on my fitness education. Essentially, everything I learned in that 5-day course in San Ramon back in 2001 was my first exposure to “technique and form”. I was highly impressionable. It was my mistake to think that everything they said was 100% true. Looking back, remembering the experience, there’s a good chance that I misinterpreted bits and pieces of what they said.

1. Benching elbows past 90 degrees

Keep in mind that I was coming from a background of almost zero formal education. I didn’t really play many sports, let alone, any high level of anything at this point in my life. All that I knew was what I read in muscle and fitness magazines – reading hydroxycut research articles that I thought to be facts. Really? Lee Priest in a lab coat? For those of you who don’t know, Lee Priest was a popular, Olympia underdog, very short bodybuilder with Popeye sized forearms.

Benching past 90 degrees or bringing the bar to your chest is perfectly safe, just as long as you have good technique..

2.) Knees going past toes or only going to 90 degrees.

This was something that was taught about lunges and leg press. I was never really taught how to squat. We were taught very simple rules for where your feet and knees should be. They touched on adduction, abduction, internal, external rotation, flexion, extension, eversion and inversion – but only really to memorize. Much of what all personal training certifications try to teach is a very abridged version of functional anatomy.

Saying that knees going past your toes or only squatting to 90 degrees of the knee is analogous to saying that basketball is very dangerous. It depends on the person.

3.) Fat makes you fat.

The problem without having some formal education in Science is that it causes many of us to make assumptions about things that appear obvious. “If you stop eating fat, you won’t get fat.” is an example of ‘almost sound logic’ depending on who you talk to. If we are to say that the truth about fat is that it indeed makes you fat then it makes sense that if you eat a bunch of low fat foods, you won’t get fat. I mean after all, Coca Cola has 0 grams of fat.

4.) Carbs make you fat.

When Atkins was all the rage, carbs became the new evil and everything was about ketosis. These days we say ketogenic. When you’re in ketosis, you’re burning a ton of fat. When it was first introduced, it was so radical. It’s the opposite of what we use to believe in. It came at a perfect time to get people to try it, and you know what happened? It actually worked – too bad that most of the rapid weight loss was due to water loss.

5.) Overhead presses cause shoulder impingement.

If you give a green personal trainer just enough information – but not all of it – you can encourage a lot of bad paradigms about exercise science. This is one of those rules that are similar to what I said about the bench press to 90 degrees only and knees going past the toes, it depends on the person.

6.) Shoulders are depressed.

I really use to advocate brining the shoulders back and down. I taught it to a point of over correction. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing and what makes this good thing bad is that constantly doing this during certain movements can encourage bad motor patterns that lead to shoulder problems.

7.) You should always squat to ATG or parallel.

When I first made a commitment to start posting on YouTube a little over a year ago, I want to make sure that I didn’t get called out on depth. Although hitting proper depth in a squat is important, how you get there is much more important. An example is that many of my female clients can’t squat ATG but they have to compromise their spine, collapse the arches in the feet and adduct the knees and over extend or posterior tilt the spine to get there. It’s okay to do it with no load or light loads for a few reps, but not for high volume or heavy weight.

8.) You can get shredded in 12 weeks.

Xenadrine and hydroxycut ads, as well as many others, made you believe that if you take their supplement, you could look like a stage competitor. I later learned, after watching bigger, faster stronger documentary, that a lot of it is smoke and mirrors; not to mention air brush, Photoshop and lighting. I’m not against accomplishing amazing results, but time frames to accomplish these goals are not always worth the sacrifice.